Reflections
SEVEN DEADLY SINS AGAINST MARKETPLACE MINISTRY
By Pete Hammond
One of the great treasures from the Roman Catholic tradition is its longstanding list of “The Seven Deadly Sins” (e.g.: “Envy, Greed, Gluttony, Anger, Sloth, Lust and Pride”). Even with its limitations, such as isolating only a few areas of failure, this teaching has highlighted human tendencies that offend God and harm us. It has been a good teaching tool for young disciples.
I want to do a similar thing for the marketplace ministry movement. Here is my adaptation of the seven deadly sins concept to ministry-in-daily-life.
1. Clericalism
This is the longstanding and all-too-popular view that the kingdom of God on earth is basically, if not exclusively, developed by ministers (“clergy”), monks, missionaries and martyrs, not the everyday believers whose church job is to faithfully support and follow the “full-time religious professionals.”
Antidote: Restore “ministry” as the calling, privilege and responsibility of every child of God and re-write the job descriptions of our pastor/teachers as equippers of all the people of God for ministry in all places at all times. (Eph. 4:11-17) Oppose the professionalization of ministry which isolates its responsibilities to a few paid professionals. For help here I strongly recommend Halverson, Richard C., How I Changed My Mind About The Church, Zondervan, 1972 and Yves Congar’s Called to Life: A Study for a Theology of the Laity, Crossroad, 1987.
2. Laity
Labeling 95% of God’s people with this term is devastating. Webster’s Dictionary says that “Laity means uninformed and not involved.” What better way to de-motivate and marginalize God’s everyday saints and undercut their calling to deliver salt, light and leaven into the world’s systems of family, community and work. It is as if God’s enemy designed a way to thwart God’s creation and redemptive mandates for the church.
Antidote: Do away with this demeaning description and recover terms like “people of God”, “believers”, “followers”, “disciples”, and “servants” as descriptors. For help here see: Bill Diehl’s Thank God, It’s Monday, Fortress Press, 1982; R. Paul Stevens, Liberating The Laity: Equipping All The Saints for Ministry, InterVarsity Press, 1985; and Droel & Pierce, Confident & Competent: A Challenge to Catholic Laity, Ave Maria Press, 1987.
3. “Calling” Is Professionalized
The view that only official employees of the church are “called ” by God is not biblical. And it is wrong and very destructive to the practice of faith in everyday life.
Antidote: Renew our understanding that in the Bible calling is primarily used to emphasize God’s invitation to all lost sinners to return to Him and be restored to the “image and likeness” of our creation so that we can be managers/stewards of all our resources for God and humanity. For help here, see Os Guinness, The Call, Finding and Fulfilling The Central Purpose of Your Life, Word, 1999 and Bob Briner’s Roaring Lambs: A Gentle Plan to Radically Change Our World, Zondervan, 1993.
4. “Church-ism”
The institutional captivity of the people of God as only being “church” when we are gathered in buildings we own and meetings that are led by church professionals or religious is Biblically unsupported and historically filled with abuse. We need to believe and behave like we are the people of God, or “church,” 24/7.
Antidote: Break out of our edifice complex and institutional captivity and affirm all believers that they are the church in both its gathered life and its scattered service. For help here see Loren Mead’s The Once And Future Church: Reinventing The Congregation for a New Mission Frontier, Alban Institute, 1991
5. Work Is Cursed
The Thank God It’s Friday (TGIF) syndrome of the American church thrives when we slip into viewing jobs and work as the result or sentence from the “curse” in Genesis 3. In conforming to this distortion, we join the secular mind that views work as a long dark tunnel between leisure weekends or the necessary evil we have to suffer to gain resources for fun.
Antidote: Remember that Adam and Eve worked before the fall, and then celebrate the truth that our DNA is that we are designed to be workers like God (Gen 1:1-31), and that the curse has impacted, but not irrevocably, ruined work. For help here see: Robert Banks, God The Worker: Journeys Into The Mind, Heart and Imagination of God, Judson Press, 1994; John C. Haughey’s Converting 9 to 5: A Spirituality of Daily Work, Crossroad, 1989; and David McKenna’s Love Your Work: Your Daily Work Can Be a Great Spiritual Resource, Victor, 1990
6. Privatized & Institutionalized Spirituality
To isolate spirituality to just personal devotion, church activity and religious volunteerism is wrong, unbiblical and reductionist. It is not God’s wish that he be compartmentalized, then reduced to being like a rabbit’s foot and used only as a charm for some of life.
Antidote: Recover biblical truths like avodah, the Hebrew word that describes both worship and work as devotion to God. Stab the ancient and dangerous “sacred/secular” divide as a lie and a contradiction of “God so loving the world that he gave....” to bring salvation, redemption and renewal to all of creation so that we might develop examples of “the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven” for all to see and join. For help here see Laura Nash, Believers In Business, Thomas Nelson, 1994
7. Limited Lordship
To reduce Jesus’ rule and reign to a few leftovers drains him and his authority over all creation. But we do practice “limited Lordship” in several ways. These include money (only 10% belongs to God, and that only on our good days); time (only 1/7 of the week is the “Lord’s Day”, and less during professional football season); real estate (only a few buildings in town are “the Lord’s House”); and work (only when we are paid religious professionals or volunteering in religious service so we call it “the Lord’s work”);
Antidote: Rediscover Jesus as “Lord of all” including broken families, dangerous communities and challenging job environments, as well as nasty leaders, bosses and employees. Train ourselves to engage these contexts with the intention of finding how God is already at work in the world, and then design our activities to complement, extend and add evidence of the kingdom to this ongoing “moving upon the waters....” (Gen 1:2) For help here see Leland Ryken’s Redeeming The Time: A Christian Approach to Work and Leisure, Baker Books, 1995, and Work and Leisure in Christian Perspective, Multnomah, 1987.
A final point about sin and evil: We must take seriously the pervasive and subtle reality of evil and sin, and avoid over-simplifying its presence and power in all of life. The tendency to name just a few things as sin (adultery, pride, some addictions, greed, laziness, etc.) and assume that all else is neutral is naive and dangerous. To have a few personal failures define evil is a serious mistake. It blinds us to major evils like discrimination, ethnocentrism, environmental destruction, greed, oppression, poverty, war and violence, etc.
One of the best resources available for this journey is Robert Banks and R. Paul Stevens Complete Book of Everyday Christianity, InterVarsity Press, 1997. This work is one of the top five best resources out of almost 2000 books in this field. It is in a Bible dictionary or encyclopedic format with over 400 articles about faith in all of life. It is currently out of print, but copies can sometimes be found by doing a web search. We also have about a hundred articles from this book on this website.
May the Lord be with you— all the time!
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